the labyrinth
by paperworlds
Summary: and it's only forever, not long at all. /valentine's exchange '14 ; for livvy


for the valentine's day exchange on octavian country day — this is for the wonderful livvy, or within a sepulchre.  
[title&summary credits to looking for alaska by john green.]

**a/n** happy valentine's day c: i don't enjoy valentine's day much and i sort of wish we got the day off, y'know, it is a holiday. buuut congratulations if you shared a magical moment on this day. (or if you got any chocolate; chocolate is good). i really hope you like this, livvy. did i use your prompts okay? i kind of changed the tense of one prompt i'm so sorry. this was very last minute.

/

Her father buys her a tiara when she's six and calls his daughter, who dances around the room in dizzy happiness, his little princess.

He leaves the week after that, gone in a whirlwind of arguments and sharp words directed towards Kendra, gone before Massie has a chance to say good bye. It's early, too early in the morning, and she's standing in the hallway, woken up by the loud voices, clutching her worn up teddy bear like it's her lifeline, stony faced because even a child can comprehend that something is wrong, very wrong. The door slams shut beside him and an uncomfortable silence hangs in the icy air.

A variety of expressions flit across her mother's pale face before she turns swiftly towards her daughter, who is still frozen in shock and commands her to go to back to her room and stay there, turning a deaf ear to Massie's protests and questions.

Later, when Massie creeps down the stairs, overhearing her mother bickering at somebody on the phone and tries asking what's wrong, Kendra snaps, spitting fire at her cowering child. Tears find their way down Massie's cheeks, amidst all the yelling and the bashing, but Kendra only sneers and with one last, sparing glare of disgust, she stalks away to the privacy of her room.

Massie's choked reply of "Daddy's not coming back, is he?" is said to the walls.

/

The first thing people notice about Massie are her eyes, always her eyes.

They were undoubtedly pretty, bold ocher with flecks of olive green, pools of amber that used to be aglow with life, once upon a long time ago. While her eyes would always retain their unique iridescence, the golden that seemed to sparkle alongside her equally bright smile was gone, replaced by a void of emptiness.

If it was possible for the sun to keep it's color and yet seem cold and lifeless, then the perfect representation of that were most definitely her eyes.

She's everything her mother, or any parent from the elite Westchester society, wouldn't want her to be; a train wreck, a time bomb on the rim of explosion, messy and caught in a tangled web of pain and insecurity. She used to be the talk of the town, multimillionaire businessman William Block's only daughter, but in a span of only a couple of months, her father leaves, Kendra turns to alcohol and the tower collapses.

She's alone, for the most part, especially after the most recent and probably final feud with her best and only friend. It was bound to happen, Massie believes, and she had almost foreseen it, reading the discomfort and exasperation clearly etched upon her friend's face.

Claire Lyon's last words to her are "You're not even trying anymore, this is fucking useless—" and they sting, because Claire really knows how to hit the spot—harsh or not, they are the truth—Massie stopped trying a couple eons ago.

Their friendship stretches back to second grade, back when they bonded over their unanimous love of light blue crayons and sour candies and it's funny how something that took so long to cherish and build could crumble so easily.

More than anything, Massie wants to remember when they became a clichéd high school movie they once used to mock, following the perfectly depicted scenarios of two close friends slowly distancing themselves, until the breach is far too big, the chasm far too wide. Most of it is her fault, she admits, and yet a part of her still wants to scream at Claire for not really trying either.

Some days, Massie hides herself in the attic, brushing the dust off the reminiscences she managed to save, rereading the stories William used to read to her and going through the same, familiar stack of books whenever she gets the chance.

In many ways, she lives off the stories, turning pages with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia but eventually, like what's become a tradition, they all end in disappointment.

Fairytales never revealed the full truth, the lies behind the accustomed happily every after. In the end, Christopher Robin had to leave behind the Hundred Acre Wood, Wendy chose to grow up, and the Wonderland Alice conjured had been nothing but a dream, a fantasy spun from the imaginative mind of a child. Christopher Robin would replace his animal friends with ones in real life, and never would it occur to him, as he got older, to pause and appreciate the nature around him. Wendy would never see Peter Pan again—Neverland was no longer an option and Alice was too old to dream now anyways.

She's too much of a coward to call Claire and she finds herself humming along to _The Killers_, stuffing her face with vast amounts of expensive chocolate, enough to make her mother faint. Who would have know that the little girl who always aimed for the stars, whether it came to swinging the highest or dressing the best—the self proclaimed princess—would end up like this?

Questions like these were what Massie debated when she was sitting on her roof, huddled up against the wall, fingers tightened around a glass bottle because while Vodka can't help heal, it can help, if only briefly, forget.

Time, though, was invincible, life went on.

/

When they talk for the first time, Massie thinks it's sort of a miracle.

They are strangers, pretty much, and Massie only knows him from the fleeting times they have brushed elbows in the hallways and the whispers about him floating about in the girls' locker room. She appreciates how his eyes are the color of the coffee she likes to drink and how, if not in any other field, he has inexplicable talent in catching balls that are thrown at his face but she has no intention to hold any sort of conversation with him.

But of course the fates ought to have had some play in this, she believes, and her untied shoelace happens to catch on the wheels underneath the shelves of perfume, sending her sprawling to the ground. He sniggers, and it's his vanity that irks her. "Do you have a problem?"

"No, but it seems like you have a couple." He retorts swiftly, shooting her a wicked grin as he tosses a toothpaste into his trolley, the creamy color a dull contrast to the colorful wrappers of all kin and kind of junk food piled inside. "Especially in coordination."

"I'm fine, thank you." Massie pushes past him towards the cashier, and he follows, settling into line behind her. "You know, The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to help me out." The words escape her lips, like water when it's overflowing, and she can't even remember the last time she cracked a joke, but he laughs.

"I hope holding the door open for you will make up for my loss in judgement then. I'm Derrick, by the way."

"Massie, and it suffices, but barely." She doesn't mean for this remark to sting, and her lips tug into a small, almost nonexistent smile, but it's there nonetheless.

He seeks her out the next time, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't extremely surprised; she hears her name and to her ears, it rings out amongst all the other loud voices resounding in the hallway. She turns, half hoping it's her old best friend, regardless of how the voice sounds extremely masculine and Claire would probably have to be suffering from laryngitis or something to sound like that.

What happens after that is sort of a blur.

/

_Interesting_, he called her.

She has been called a lot of things, some of them not very nice and some of them insincere, fake simmers of appreciation falling from the lips of guests who used to visit her home, and she has been called cute but never has anyone found her fascinating. (It's quite the contrary, if she's being honest).

Derrick only known her for two weeks, and yet it takes only a couple of days for other people to notice his interest in her. Rumors were whizzing through the hallway like gunfire in a battlefield, and the insecure part of Massie wants to go hide, run to the haven of her room. The attention she once used to bask in scares her now. Two weeks of sitting next to her in Precalc, two weeks of conversations and the one time he said she looked pretty in her favorite sweater.

Three days later, he suggests they study for their upcoming math test, and that's how they end up sitting beside each other in a table in Starbucks — the Caramel frappucino she forces him into buying really brings out the honey in his eyes. (She ends up spilling half her life to him that day). His lips brush against her cheek when she's at her porch and it's time for her to leave.

Massie blames it on the books she reads, the reason her imagination instantly takes flight and her mind convinces her into believing that had been their first date.

She shows up at his house one day and the confusion reflected on his mother's face all makes sense when she's bounding up the stairs and her gaze lands on his open the door and the scene inside. His eyes are, thankfully, closed and his face is almost hidden, but only because of the pretty ringlets in Allie-Rose Singer's hair.

Once more, Massie's vision is blinded by her sudden onslaught of tears.

/

Stupid. Stupid. _Stupid_.

The words resound in her head, and she repeats them to herself almost as mantra, wanting to curse and curse herself for letting anybody in again. One part of her wants to tear her hair out, to bury herself in her comforter and never rise again while the other wants to do something, to forcibly extinguish his pride and his hope like he did hers when she saw him making out like there was no tomorrow.

She ends up not going to school for three days, wrapping herself in bed covers and surviving solely on ginger tea; by the end, she has to come to the conclusion that one, the they had no happy ending is because they were never a story in the first place and two, falling in love can be bitter and terrible because falling can only lead to landing gracefully or a painful crash. (Luck has never favored Massie Block).

Derrick sends her two texts, one inquiring why she missed school and the other telling her excitedly about Allie-Rose Singer and how he's planning to ask her out to the movies someday.

Massie is aware that he is not to blame for what happened — who is she to force him into anything — but it hurts and she ignores him and everyone else anyway.

It's as if the hole he pulled her out of has drawn her back in, and the darkness is worse than ever, just to welcome her back.

/

Six weeks later it's summer, and as the plane makes it descent, the picturesque city of Venice slowly comes into focus; the vividly colored houses and the turquoise glow of the Venetian canals, enhanced by the rising sun, is probably one of the most beautiful things Massie has ever seen.

Traveling is probably the best decision she ever made, because a new adventure means a fresh page, another story, and this time Massie swears to focus on not the ending, but the journey.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive and Massie forgives her father who she never knew, her mother who she never understood, she forgives Derrick and most importantly, she forgives herself.


End file.
